By order of His Majesty’s Government, Harris Mackenzie, late of Glenoran, having been found guilty of High Treason in support of the Young Pretender, was executed at the Gallows of Inverness upon the 14th day of June, in the Year of Our Lord 1748.
His body hath been interred within the Kirkyard adjoining the prison.
May God have mercy upon his soul.
Enclosed are those personal effects returned by the custody of the Crown.
Folded inside the letter was a scrap of linen: faded tartan, definitely not Mackenzie colors, edges singed. Heather’s breath trembled.
Flynn’s voice came quiet behind her. “He never made it home.”
Heather closed the diary, hands shaking. “But she did. And for whatever reason… she hid it.” They stood wairly in the ruined library, surrounded by chaos and golden dust.
Flynn rested a hand on her back. “She left the trail. Now we follow it.”
Heather nodded, tears slipping silently down her cheeks. “For her. For all of them.”
The wind sighed through the broken window. Somewhere deep within the old house, the fireplace whispered like a heartbeat, and she felt something new rise through the ache.
Purpose.
Chapter 36
Fiona Cameron—Glenoran House, 1748
Snow fell soft as ash across the glen.
Fiona watched it from the high window of the nursery, her daughter cradled against her chest. Small, warm… perfect. The bairn’s breath fluttered lightly against her skin, her tiny fist curled around the edge of Fiona’s shawl.
“Easy, lassie,” Fiona whispered, brushing a red curl from the baby’s brow. “The world’s no’ as cold as it looks.”
Behind her, the door creaked open and Harris stepped into the room.
He moved carefully, too carefully, quiet as if approaching a miracle he still wasn’t convinced he deserved. The months hadchanged him; the wildness of the Highlands was still there, coiled and watchful, but softened now around the edges, gentled by the weight of his daughter’s existence.
His daughter.
Elizabeth.
Fiona watched him say the name in his head, the way he always did. Thanking God for blessing him with her.
“Ye chose her name well,” she said softly.
He glanced at her.
“My mother’s Bible,” he said. “The margins were full of names. Elizabeth meant somethin’ to her.God is my oath.”
Fiona’s throat tightened.
“A promise, then,” she murmured.
“Aye,” he said with a nod. “One bigger than me.”
But there was something else, too.
Something held tight beneath the calm.
Fiona felt it before she could name it.
